Hope Fellowship

A Prayer We Should All Pray

Have you ever paused when someone asked you how they might be praying for you? It can be an awkward moment when we try to determine how much to share, or even what we feel is truly worth sharing. Sometimes, if we are honest, we can even respond with a request that we ourselves are not personally praying for!

So how might we be praying for ourselves and seeking for others to pray for us? A friend of mine recently pointed me to a quote by Ignatius of Antioch who gives a beautiful answer:

Please pray for me,

that I may have both spiritual and physical strength to perform my duties;

that I may not only speak the truth but become the truth;

that I may not only be called a Christian, but also live like a Christian.

Yet I do not want people to look to me as an example,for at best I can only be a pale reflection of Christ Jesus; let people look away from the reflection and turn to the reality.

Christianity is not a matter of persuading people of particular ideas, but of inviting them to share in the greatness of Christ.

So pray that I may never fall into the trap of impressing people with clever speech, but instead I may learn to speak with humility, desiring only to impress people with Christ himself.